Pagan Reactions to BWP
Jenny
jennyg@compuserve.com
Wed Aug 18 12:31:19 1999
Scott Cunningham once said, "Though curses are rare, if we believe we are cursed, we are!"*p*Religious persecution may be more common than magickal curses, but the same principle holds true.  Perception creates much of "reality".  There is some bona fide persecution, just as there are some real curses.  However if you expect or want to see persecution, you can find it anywhere.*p*The Blair Witch Project is a good example of that.  In an earlier post, I suggested that many people projected their fears onto this movie.  The Pagan community did this too, and what we projected was pretty darned ugly.*p*Many people believe that BWP is an attack on Witches, or that it slanders us.  I read many posts urging boycotts and protests.  A number of writers accused the movie's producers of being prejudiced against Witches and deliberately spitting on our community.  The most insane complaint I heard came from a man who insisted that the Blair Witch Project was a government-sponsored propaganda piece, designed to desensitize the US populace to violence against Witches.  The goal of the movie, this person argued, was to prepare the way for a Holocaust-style campaign of genocide against American Witches, to be launched in a few years by the US government.*p*As I listened to these complaints, one fact stood out:  almost none of the complainers knew anything about the movie.  All most of them seemed to know was that the movie was called the Blair WITCH Project, and the "witch" was bad.  No one had actually ever seen it, nor had they read the producers' accounts (available on the web) of how they made the movie and what it meant to them.*p*Based on this miniscule amount of information, people were howling about persection, genocide, boycotts, etc., etc.*p*When somebody actually bothered to do some research, the information uncovered was stunningly different than the Nazi-Death-Camp scenarios being booted about the web.  The URL below links to a wonderful interview at the Witches' Voice.  Peg Aloi talked to Ed Sanchez and Dan Myrick, the two guys who made BWP.  In a polite, articulate, and sensible manner, she raised the issue of Witchcraft stereotypes and the Pagan community's concerns over the movie.*p*Sanchez and Myrick explained that it had never dawned on them that modern Witches might be insulted.  Once it was explained to them, they saw the point and offered to provide links to Wiccan web-pages, to help use the movie's publicity to aid a public awareness campaign.  (Unfortunately Artisan, the company that now owns the film, nixed this -- as CNN reported today.)*p*Neither producer intended the movie as an insult to mortal Witches -- as I mentioned, the creature in the film may be called a "witch", but it's obviously supernatural.  In fact one, Ed Sanchez, said that part of his motivation for the film was anger that in movies like "The Crucible", witch-hunters get away with murder.  Here, in BWP, the fears that they project return to them with lethal force.*p*Overall, the general Pagan reaction to the movie disturbed me, for several reasons.  First, it was uninformed and reactionary.  There are some serious complaints that can be lodged against the movie, as Peg Aloi did.  Most people, however, simply went postal because BWP used the word "witch" in a negative way.*p*Second, it highlighted how paranoid we can be.  Most of the complainers I heard assumed that this was a deliberate attack on Wicca.  Few people tried to do anything positive or even to find out if their assumptions held water.  They simply labelled the producers "bigots" and attacked.  The thought that this was an honest (if ignorant) mistake never seemed to enter people's minds.*p*Third, it was a waste of effort.  There are real, threatening, bona fide acts of persecution going on in the world around us.  We should spend our energy combatting them, not jumping at shadows.*p*Fourth, it made us look foolish.  I have followed the buzz on the film for months.  I have never, EVER seen anyone -- except a Pagan -- who thinks that this movie had any connection to modern Witchcraft.  Not one, single, solitary person.*p*There has been discussion about the Pagan/Wiccan community, but the gist of it is, "Are you guys nuts?"  Our complaints about the movie are not seen as being reasonable, or well-thought-out.  (Perhaps because the vast majority of them aren't...)  Instead, non-Pagans complain that we're insanely over-sensitive, paranoid, and love feeling persecuted.*p*Ironically, the worst PR for Wicca has come from us, not the producers of BWP.  When people think of Wicca and BWP, they don't think of the malevolent entity of the film -- they think of the uninformed, hysterical, and self-righteous rants that Pagans have scattered across the web.*p*And so, as in the movie, our fears have come home and bit us.*br*




http://www.witchvox.com/media/blairwitch_interview.html
http://www.witchvox.com/media/blairwitch_interview.html